A
series of coordinated bombings struck three churches and three hotels on Easter
Sunday killing 290 people in the worst attacks in Sri Lanka since the end of
the civil war 10 years ago.

At
least 500 people were wounded in total of eight explosions. According to police
several of the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers.

Most
of the victims were killed in three churches where worshippers were attending
Easter Sunday services.

Washington Post said: "the
suicide bombings on the holiest day of the Christian calendar, when churches
see their highest attendance of the year, were widely viewed as targeting Sri
Lanka's small Christian community, a minority that regularly faces
discrimination."

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Fewer than 8 percent of the
roughly 20 million people in Sri Lanka are Christian (the vast majority of them
Roman Catholic). Seventy percent are Buddhist, according to the country's 2012
census, 12.6 percent are Hindu and 9.7 percent are Muslim.

Violent attacks on this
scale against churches are without precedent in Sri Lanka. The Christian
minority, however, does face violence and discrimination, the Washington Post
added and quoted human rights activist Ruki Fernando as saying:

"Church services across the
country have faced some sort of disruption in each of the past 11 Sundays. Last
year, the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka reported 86
verifiable cases of discrimination, threats and violence against Christians. Before
Sunday's attacks, 26 such incidents had occurred this year, including the
disruption of a Sunday service by Buddhist monks."

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Radical Buddhism opposes
converts

To
borrow Open Doors USA, those who convert to Christianity from a Buddhist or
Hindu background suffer the strongest forms of persecution. They are
subject to harassment, discrimination and marginalization by family and
community. These believers are pressured to recant Christianity; conversion is
regarded as betrayal. All ethnic Sinhalese (the majority in Sri Lanka) are
expected to be Buddhist.

Similarly,
within the minority Tamil population in the northeast, Sinhalese are expected
to be Hindu. Non-traditional churches are frequently targeted by neighbors,
often joined by Buddhist monks and local officials, who demand Christians close
their church buildings regarded as illegal.

Open
Doors USA report pointed out that on September 9, 2018, a group of about 100
people stopped the worship service of a church at Beliatta, Hambantota
District. They damaged a window, two motorcycles parked outside, and removed
religious symbols hanging on the front door. Some forcibly entered the premises
and threatened to kill the pastor and his family and demanded they stop
gathering people for worship activities and leave the village.

The
majority of state schools do not teach Christianity as a subject, and so
Christian schoolchildren are forced to study Buddhism or Hinduism. There have
also been reports that children were forced to participate in Buddhist rituals.

According
to the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (NCEASL), there has
been a sharp increase of attacks on Christians, including violent attacks often
carried out through mobs.

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Attacks on Christian churches
resumed in May 2009

Tisaranee Gunasekara, a Colombo-based
political commentator based in Colombo, following the 2009 victory over the LTTE (Tamil Tigers),
attacks on Christian churches resumed in May 2009. "Unlike during the previous
occasions, this time only evangelical churches were targeted. Days after the
war ended, security forces raided the office of the National Christian
Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka in Colombo. Since the raid was not linked to
any further action, it seems that its purpose was to terrorise. An attack on a
church in the suburban town of Kelaniya was personally led by a government
minister closely identified with the ruling family. As attacks on evangelical
churches intensified, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith issued a statement blaming the
victimized evangelicals of trying to convert Buddhists and Catholics. He was
moved to protest only when a statue of the Virgin Mary, built to commemorate
the 150th anniversary of a Catholic church in the provincial town of
Avissawella, was burnt in late January 2013."

Minorities are essentially outsiders, irrespective of how
long they have been here. Sinhala-Buddhists are the sole owners of the country;
minorities are not co-owners but guests, here on sufferance without inalienable
rights, notwithstanding what the Constitution might proclaim, argues Tisaranee Gunasekara.

Author and journalist.
Author of
Islamic Pakistan: Illusions & Reality;
Islam in the Post-Cold War Era;
Islam & Modernism;
Islam & Muslims in the Post-9/11 America.
Currently working as free lance journalist.
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